


shattered

by thelesterhowells



Series: phandom bingo 2018 [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Coffeeshop AU, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, University AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 12:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16305098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelesterhowells/pseuds/thelesterhowells
Summary: "And when the days are grey, dark and rainy like today, he knows the only ray of sunshine he'll see will be the cute barista down in the coffeeshop called Hotchpotch."





	shattered

**Author's Note:**

> like always thank you so, so much to my absolutely amazing beta [@insectbah](https://insectbah.tumblr.com/) and to [@stressedoutteenager](https://stressedoutteenager.tumblr.com/) for the feedback and suggestions :)
> 
>  
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Phil is stressed and so tired he doesn't even know how to  _ not  _ think about university related things anymore. It's the third week in a row that he is in the library every single day. He meets up with his friends - Jimmy and Tom - pretty early in the morning and they stay until the library closes so they're forced to leave.

The colour of the circles under his eyes are such a deep shade of purple against his pale skin that he is glad his mum doesn't have to see him like that, knowing that she would be worried about him. He is feeling particularly unmotivated today, and really wanted to crawl back into bed this morning.

Instead he is on his way to the library again with all the deadlines he is most definitely going to miss very present in his brain. On some days his chest feels so heavy while thinking about those deadlines that he has no idea how to breathe normally anymore. And on some days he feels like his brain doesn’t work properly, fogging up all productive thoughts he could've produced that day.

He is aware of how overly dramatic his own thoughts sound, but he just wants this stress to be over. And if he is honest with himself, he just wants to pity himself for a while. It gives him an oddly satisfying feeling to list all the things he has to do in order to feel bad, but he'll stop eventually and start actually working on all of those things.

Phil actually even  _ likes _ the library. It's an old building that overlooks a tiny little forest, and it's cosy and warm during the winter and pleasantly chilly during the summer.

They have tiny little rooms whose walls are made out of glass to do group projects in or to make sure that you can work in an absolutely quiet environment. They really aren’t big, but Phil and his friends still pile up in there just to work together.

He doesn’t even know what they’re actually called; they just call them glass closets because that's how tiny they are. And sometimes, when Phil sits in them all by himself, and people walk past, looking in, he finds himself feeling quite uneasy. Almost exposed and vulnerable. He, Jimmy and Tom still always choose the glass closets though. They like working with closed doors and away from other people while still being near everybody.

Today as he sits in there and looks outside, he can see the trees dancing in the wind and the raindrops rushing to the ground as if they're in a race. And when the days are grey, dark and rainy like today, he knows the only ray of sunshine he'll see will be the cute barista down in the coffeeshop called Hotchpotch.

Phil is sure that the guy started working there just a few weeks ago. Jimmy, Tom and Phil hang out in the Hotchpotch all the time, but he had never seen him before. And then suddenly he was there all the time. He worked basically every day and knew their order by heart a few days in. He smiled every time the three of them entered the coffee shop, but he beamed when he locked eyes with Phil. And just for a second Phil forgot about all his stress and all the papers he still needed to finish.

"Go ask for his name!" Jimmy had insisted one day on their lunch break, but Phil had chickened out and just kept calling him curly head. Phil loves those curls. He wants to run his fingers through them, and maybe even nuzzle his nose into them. He sometimes dreams of those beautiful fluffy curls. And those chocolate brown eyes regularly haunt his dreams, almost mocking him for just looking and never really talking.

Today, Phil tells himself, today he's going to talk to the barista. Maybe he'll just ask for the guy's name, that was always a safe choice. And when the lunch break comes he is determined to talk to curly head.

"Three large coffees. Two with sugar and milk. One black with one sugar," curly head says the moment the three of them arrive at the Hotchpotch. He is smiling at them, and Tom, who is way better in social situations, takes over the conversation when Phil doesn't say more than, "Yep."  

"Thank you so much. It's always the same, isn't it?" He simply says, and Phil is annoyed because that is something he could've answered too. So he gathers up all his courage and says the first thing that comes to his mind as the barista is finishing up their coffees.

"Soooo how do  _ you _ take your coffee then?" He asks slowly and stares right into curly head’s confused looking face. He can practically feel how Jimmy rolls his eyes behind him, and he can hear that Tom is trying not to laugh.

"Oh. Uhm - actually black with one sugar," he answers and Phil has no idea what to say after that. If he was a smooth and confident person he could say something along the lines of, "Do you want to grab a black coffee with one sugar with me?"

But he is not a smooth and confident person so he says nothing, and like always one of his friends saves him.

"Aw. Just like me! I'm Jimmy by the way. That's Tom and that's Phil. It's kinda long overdue that we introduced ourselves, right?"

Curly head laughs at that, and Phil's only thought is that he wants to hear that laugh every waking second from now on. And  _ he  _ wants to be the reason for that laugh.  _ He  _ wants to make him happy like that.

"Yeah definitely, guys. I'm Dan," he says as he hands them their coffees. The moment to say something else passes by in a matter of seconds.

-

Phil is thinking about that conversation long after they left the coffee shop, and it leaves him with a worse mood than before.

That's until Tom says: "Hey, Phil. Look under your cup."

A sticky note: " _You are adorable._ " And a number is written directly under it.

Everything moves on very quickly after that. Phil wants to message Dan right away, but he waits until he is home that night. And what starts off kind of awkwardly turns into something so easy that they talk the whole night.

They go out for coffee the next day, and Phil learns that Dan is studying creative writing in the same year as Phil. After just a couple of hours Phil feels like he has known Dan for ages, that's how comfortable he is around him. They hang out every chance they get, and Phil starts to actually talk to Dan on his lunch breaks at the Hotchpotch.

When the classes start again and Dan has fewer shifts, he joins Phil and his friends in the glass closet to study. And when Phil arrives earlier than the others and has to wait in the glass closets for them to join him, he doesn't feel uneasy anymore. Because the feeling of excitement about seeing Dan again sweeps away any other emotion.

-

That thing between them was not defined for a long time, not really at least. But everybody around them seemed to know what was going on, and nobody cared all that much. A couple of weeks into "seeing each other" Dan and Phil were sitting in one of the glass closets, just the two of them, trying to work on their assignments before meeting Jimmy and Tom. After not checking the time for a few hours, they got startled by a knock on the glass. 

"Are you lads coming out now?" Tom asked, and Dan and Phil’s only reaction was to look at each other and burst out laughing while Tom realized the double meaning a few seconds too late. Jimmy just rolled his eyes, but gave them a knowing look.

"Phil, your boyfriend’s arrived," Jimmy said a couple of weeks after that, and Phil was a tiny bit scared to look at Dan in fear of his reaction even though he knew that they were kind of on the same page about their feelings for each other. It was obvious in every way. In the way they touched, in the way they looked at each other, in the way they kissed, in the way they shared the bed more often than not. And when he turned his head he looked in a brightly smiling face, and he decided that he definitely could start calling Dan his boyfriend as well. They never talked about their relationship status, they never announced that they were dating. It was just an established fact at some point.

-

They graduated at the end of July, and despite how stressful writing a bachelor's thesis was, Phil never got extremely overwhelmed by it. Dan was always by his side trying to prevent his chest feeling heavy and making sure that his brain worked most of the time.

They were happy about a nearly three months long break before they would go back to uni for their master's degrees. It was a spontaneous decision to book one way tickets to Japan and just go. They travelled for the whole three months and they used all of their savings, but they didn't regret one second of it.

Something shifted between them during their holiday. They were together every single day, but not once did Phil think that he needed a break from Dan. Not once did he stop smiling when he woke up next to Dan.

"I totally thought that we would be annoyed as fuck by each other by now," Dan had said one night after two months of travelling. And Phil had thought the same, but it never happened, that feeling never came.

Instead they shared their first "I love you" on the beach in  Okinawa Hontō .

They kissed in a gay club in Tokyo after a guy hit on Dan and Phil felt the need to make sure everybody in there knew that they were a couple. It was a strange and very new feeling of possessiveness that made him do that, but he could see in the way Dan’s eyes lit up that he definitely didn't mind it.

They held hands on the way home that night.

"Do you think we can do that back home in London, too?" Phil asked and looked down on their intertwined hands.

"We can do whatever we want, Philly. Whatever we want," Dan answered with a slurred and raspy voice, while looking up into the night sky and swinging their hands back and forth.

-

And they did whatever they wanted when they came back home. They moved in together even though their families and friends said it was way too soon. They held hands whenever they wanted. They still didn't really like public displays of affection, but they kissed sometimes in public places. Sometimes drunkenly and sloppy in clubs. Sometimes tired and comforting on train station platforms. Sometimes heated and passionate right in front of their home. 

-

They started their master's degrees in October.  Jimmy, Tom, Phil and Dan still studied together in the library and went to the Hotchpotch for their lunch breaks. And Dan still knew their order by heart when he worked a shift in the coffeeshop. 

The four of them had agreed to go and work on their weekly assignments one day, but Dan and Phil got there first. It was the first time back in the library after three months of travelling. They put their backpacks in the lockers, and made their way up to the glass closets. Phil was laughing about something Dan had said when his brain got confused all of a sudden because something was  _ different _ . He looked around, and saw that Dan had a searching look on his face too. And then it hit him suddenly. The glass closets were gone, all of them. There were replaced with regular rows of tables and chairs instead, and a sign that said that the rooms were moved to a different building because staff and students felt more comfortable working like this in the library. 

Phil stared at Dan, and Dan stared right back with a smile forming on his lips. They had started to giggle, Phil just took Dan's hand, and they looked for a new spot to sit, not really bothered by the missing glass closets. Actually, Phil loved that the glass closets were gone. The space felt way more open and spacious like this. And if he could sit right next to Dan it didn't really matter what their surroundings looked like. 

**Author's Note:**

> [come and say hi and maybe reblog on tumblr](https://thelesterhowells.tumblr.com/post/179082052562/shattered) :)


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